With news that Trop­i­cal Storm Karen was up­on T&T, some Green­vale res­i­dents moved out of the area on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day in fear of dev­as­tat­ing floods and re­liv­ing the Oc­to­ber 19, 2018, night­mare.

How­ev­er, most said they thought that the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were much more pre­pared than last year and took the chance to stay in their re­spec­tive homes.

Those who lived in the con­dos at Calver­ly Av­enue and Baltic Av­enue moved their ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture to the up­per floors as a safe­guard mea­sure.

Res­i­dent Pat­sy Teles­ford, 66, told Guardian Me­dia that when she heard about the storm she was very much afraid.

“I was very fright­ened be­cause I re­mem­ber the last time how every­thing was de­stroyed but when we drove around and see the riv­er not so high we didn’t wor­ry so much again. They dredged the riv­er and HDC was more pre­pared be­cause they came in and sup­plied flood bags for us,” Teles­ford said.

HDC’s re­gion­al man­ag­er Bren­don George, who was sta­tioned near the Green­vale Po­lice Youth Club on Sun­day, said they were dis­trib­ut­ing flood bags as one of their pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures in­struct­ed by HD­Cs man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons.

He al­so added two ten-inch pumps were in­stalled to pump out the ex­cess flood­wa­ters, “We test­ed the pumps out on Sat­ur­day and it was all set and ready to go but we didn’t have to de­pend on the pumps to­day (Sun­day) as the flood­wa­ters did not en­ter the area.”

In prepa­ra­tion for the ad­verse weath­er, mem­bers of the HDC’s emer­gency pre­pared­ness and re­sponse team vis­it­ed some of the HDC’s most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties such as Green­vale Park, Orop­une Gar­dens, Ed­in­burgh South and Har­mo­ny Hall, Gas­par­il­lo to as­sess wa­ter lev­els in near­by wa­ter­cours­es, dis­trib­ute flood bags and im­ple­ment oth­er pre­pared­ness mea­sures.

The team, led by the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Brent Lyons, was al­so in con­tact with first re­spon­ders and the rel­e­vant mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure that the nec­es­sary re­sponse ap­proach­es will be adopt­ed in a time­ly and co­or­di­nat­ed man­ner if any of our most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties are im­pact­ed.

Con­tact was al­so made with the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) to en­sure that the EL­DAM bus­es can be used to trans­port per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and the el­der­ly with­in these com­mu­ni­ties, should the need arise. Oth­er pri­vate trans­port providers have al­so been put on alert to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port to res­i­dents.

“The emer­gency pre­pared­ness and re­sponse team stands ready to as­sist the first re­spon­ders and the oth­er state agen­cies in the ex­e­cu­tion of their re­sponse ef­forts as they re­late to HDC hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” the HDC said.

Ear­ly on Sun­day morn­ing Lyons and a small team vis­it­ed Green­vale Park and Orop­une Gar­dens to do an­oth­er analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion.

“The HDC urges res­i­dents to be vig­i­lant and alert and pay spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion to the warn­ings from the rel­e­vant agen­cies and me­dia,” the HDC said.